8 ms·

Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct, because the government was not the source of said capability, and therefore had no a

by yters 7y ago

Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct, because the government was not the source of said capability, and therefore had no authority to control the capability. Now rights seems to mean things the government is responsible for giving to the citizen, which turns the formulation on its head to imply that the government is the source of human rights. Seems to be a dangerous trend, however humanitarian its portrayal may be.

shusson 7y ago
> Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct references or examples?
- CapitalistCartr 7y ago
  The American Bill of Rights; first 10 amendments to the U. S. Constitution, are restrictions on what the government can do to the people, not stuff the government has to do for, or give to, the people.
  - shusson 7y ago
    Amendment 6, 7 and 8 sound like stuff the government has to do for people. e.g "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."
    - dbatten 7y ago
      Yes, on a surface level, these are framed as "stuff the government has to do for the people," but the root issue is still making sure the government doesn't take away the rights and freedoms people naturally have. Written a different way, this would say "the government can't take away your freedoms by arresting you, accusing you of a crime, but then delaying or denying a fair trial to figure out if you're actually guilty."
      - shusson 7y ago
        I think I see your point broadly, but some things don't really fit. Like how is, a person has the right "to have the assistance of counsel for his defense", linked to the government not taking away the rights of people. I guess I'm more focusing on the `fair` part in the rights, which to me seems more connected with something like housing.
        dbatten 7y ago
        Ensuring you have counsel is intended to make sure that the government can't unfairly imprison/punish a person who is ignorant of the legal system and incapable of defending themselves. The end goal is still to be a check on government power. That's still far different from the government being obligated to provide you housing. (To be clear - I'm not taking a position on universal housing. It might be a great idea! I just think it's a different class of right, and I think the distinction is worth preserving.)
        shusson 7y ago
        > The end goal is still to be a check on government power I see, I always thought that those amendments were about equality between people, but in this context it makes more sense.
        keanzu 7y ago
        Putting together an effective legal defense in the face of myriad laws is a difficult task. The government agrees to not abuse its power of incarceration against the citizenry. Your right to freedom is what's at stake. If the government wants to take it they agree to make their case, not do so capriciously.
      - Miner49er 7y ago
        By this logic, you can say "the government can't take away your freedoms by evicting you and then denying you the right to find housing elsewhere."
        7y ago
- greggeter 7y ago
  Bill of Rights comes to mind. Religion, speech, association, mobility, self defense, defense from tyranny, fair trial, etc.
praveenperera 7y ago
I agree, a natural right is something the government can’t grant, only take away.
gchamonlive 7y ago
You could easily argument that by facilitating operations in speculation and high concentrations of wealth in a few hands, the government has indeed been obstructing people from their rights. It is only natural to counterbalance this trend with providing people with the needs they have been deprived of, like shelter.
- yters 7y ago
  Perhaps you should spell out this easy argument. On the surface it makes no sense to me. Bob down the street having a mansion doesn't impinge on my rights in any way. In fact, it is great that Bob's mansion doesn't get taken away for my sake, because it means I have the opportunity to also get a mansion that won't be taken away from me :)
  - gchamonlive 7y ago
    If you look for the problem where it is non-exsitent the thought will surely make no sense, but instead of a mansion in the suburbs, think of a highly populated area. Think silicon valley for instance, where 150k does not allow for a decent living condition. Take my home country, Brazil: 6.9 million homeless, 6 million empty homes (https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-44028774 https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-44028774). The exact nature of this we can only speculate, but given how crazy expensive flats in big cities like sao paulo cost and how many of those are uninhabited, we can only blame speculation and the market regulation for it. That is some of the thought behind my argument.
    - yters 7y ago
      I would disagree that everyone needs to live in sao paulo or silicon valley.
      - gchamonlive 7y ago
        I never said that. I am just describing a problem. Those who live there do so because they either have jobs, family or some other need. In any case, that would not be a problem if, like in Japan's most populated zones, there wasn't this disparity between land pricing and uninhabited zones.
wffurr 7y ago
Your capabilities are meaningless if you can't eat, don't have shelter, and are sick.
- rienbdj 7y ago
  your freedom of assembly (for example) is not infringed upon if you can't assemble on the moon.
- zip1234 7y ago
  The point is that it is inaccurate to use the word 'right' because the government is providing a product not a right as a right is something that you would have inherently without the government there anyways.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    The water is muddied somewhat by things like: The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay, the right to a lawyer, the right to an impartial jury, and the right to know who your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you. People conflate these rights with human rights but they are in place to prevent the government from unduly interfering with your inalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" which the Declaration of Independence says have been given to all humans by their creator, and which governments are created to protect.
    - AlgorithmicTime 7y ago
      Those are restrictions on what the government can do to you, not requirements that you be provided something. The government cannot prosecute in secret after keeping you locked up for years. The government cannot prevent you from obtaining counsel. The government cannot choose a jury on the basis of its bias against you. The government cannot shield whoever accused you from scrutiny. The government must tell you of what you are accused.
    - socialdemocrat 7y ago
zozbot234 7y ago
Private property in land is pretty much the definition of a government-created privilege, so the government does plenty of "obstructing" when it comes to people's right to shelter. The governments which originally granted those monopoly rights on land many centuries ago had no inherent authority to do so-- although they may have had authority to lease the use of that land for some limited time, under fair and non-discriminatory rules. (This is how land is managed e.g. in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the system works quite well.)
- keanzu 7y ago
  > had no inherent authority to do Who decides what inherent authority governments do and don't have?
  - yters 7y ago
    Hopefully not the governments!
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > Private property in land is pretty much the definition of a government-created privilege Though I welcome citations to prove the matter one way or the other, I suspect that the 18th-century Lockean concept of natural rights which informed the founders of the USA, saw ownership of private property as a right and not a government-created privilege. That is, if one claimed land on what was seen as terra nullius, or if a person’s family had owned the lank back to time immemorial, then the land was rightfully theirs regardless of government recognition or not. State recognition in the form of deeds would only have represented something useful for dispute resolution, and did not imply that the state was granting any rights.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Locke specifically cautioned that ownership in land could only be justified so long as there was "enough, and as good, left in common for others". Clearly, this is no longer the case today; indeed, the monetary value of that monopoly right precisely shows the extent to which the use of land has become scarce.
mc32 7y ago
And if the government can “grant” you something they can take it away as well. It also has the quality of creating dependency on a government and their ability to deliver and or their ability to dictate conditions.
- mewpmewp2 7y ago
  Other rights can also be taken away. I do not think either of those comments have valuable meaning.
  - keanzu 7y ago
    In countries without constitutional protections, sure. But in the US taking away people's inalienable rights, for example to free speech, is nearly impossible.
    - mewpmewp2 7y ago
      And if you give everyone housing you would still have to use force to take away that housing and especially from so many people, the same way you would have to use force to take away free speech.
      - mc32 7y ago
        All you have to do is pit one group as more deserving than another and let them fight it out. You also let them deteriorate like the Soviet housing blocks (not that the tenants didn’t try to do upkeep, but infrastructural aspects).
        mewpmewp2 7y ago
        This would take a while. What I am trying to say though is that action and inaction are not so different really. There are plenty of things government has to actively do and enforce to make sure that any basic rights are honored. You can take away free speech by simply stop policing and defending your people. Meaning free speech will not be so free as someone might kill you for what you are saying. Decision whether something should be made a right should not be based on whether it can be labelled as passive or active, but whether it will benefit the society. If making housing a right overall increases average life quality and makes unproductive lives productive it should be done. People here can disagree or agree whether the people who will get that housing will male something of their life, and this is something that we have to experiment with in order to find out. Also if you believe that of the government and that government can not inherently be improved there is not much to do anyway.
dbatten 7y ago
I agree. I really wish people would tweak the rhetoric just slightly - "housing should be a right" is a perfectly logical humanitarian cause to rally behind. It doesn't assume the right is innate, doesn't call it a "human" right, but still says housing should be something everybody in our society is entitled to. Reasonable people can then disagree about whether the humanitarian benefits of making it a right are worth the costs, etc. Calling things that aren't innate to our humanity "human rights" is absurd - for housing, but especially for things like the internet. Should we try politicians in The Hague because they don't provide universal housing for their people? Should we impose international sanctions on countries that don't have widespread broadband? Of course not. Conflating these concepts also devalues the concept of human rights, and reduces our ability to actually focus on human rights violations. Slavery, political oppression, violence, etc. are still a very real and special class of problem in our world. People's innate human dignity is being trampled every day by oppressive, violent regimes (and, even in some cases, by liberal democracies). Let's not water down our view of these travesties by conflating them with debates about the generosity of the welfare state in rich Western democracies.
- bildung 7y ago
  But housing specifially is a human right, it is stated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
  - dbatten 7y ago
    Of course it's in the UN's declaration... I just disagree philosophically with the UN's declaration. Human rights, in my mind, are something that existed before the UN, and exist independent of the UN. And there's centuries of political philosophy that agree with me on that point. See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence. That tradition of political philosophy sees rights as inherent to humanity (in this case God-given, but it doesn't have to be), not guaranteed by some statement of a government or group of governments.
keanzu 7y ago
Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group—a government, for example—usually in the form of abuse or coercion. As such, negative rights exist unless someone acts to negate them. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. In other words, for a positive right to be exercised, someone else's actions must be added to the equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
- lhopki01 7y ago
  Usually summed up as freedom from and freedom to. It's an over generalization but the US has tended to favor freedom from and Europe freedom to.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
socialdemocrat 7y ago
No that was never the case. You are making a universal assumption about how the e.g. US was founded. This idea of government not getting in the way of citizens is an American idea. It does not apply to every country. And the US, Canada and Australia are also outliers in this respect. In these cases one had vast amounts of land and resources and relatively few people. Anyone could in principle make it by working the land. In most other countries civilization has existed for thousands of years and all land is taken. Without government working with people, there really is not opportunity in these cases. If one takes the European experience, common people have a history of having been exploited by the rich, pushed into tiny plots of land. It was only through democratic control of government that the common man could start to get the government to work for his/her benefit.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  In Europe as well it used to be mostly about rights in the sense of freedom to do things without obstruction and about limiting state/monarch power. See the English Bill of Rights or the French Revolution. America was founded on the same principles. Housing as a human right may be classically interpreted as being free to buy, rent, build your house, etc. but the widespread modern interpretation is that individuals are entitled to be provided housing.
  - bildung 7y ago
    The consequentialist philosophy of justice (which is the base of the Finnish reasoning) goes a bit like this: * People should have a right to housing. * Yet we see many people how apparently can't obtain housing. * Assuming they don't just all prefer to live on the streets, some forces are hindering them to get housing. * It is therefore the responsibiliy of society to remove this discrimination, so that people don't just have the right on paper, but also factually. So this isn't about entitlement in the negative sense. The constitutionalist view more common in the US: * People should have a right to housing (I know, not per the consitution, but this is the right this article is about) * If nobody is discriminated by law, based on race, gender or something else, from practicing this right (e.g. buying property, or signing a contract for renting a flat), then all is fine. So the core difference is that the consequentialist view looks at empirical evidence to decide whether there is discrimination or not. The institutional view just looks at the law etc. ( = the institutions).
bildung 7y ago
AFAIR there never was a period from the renaissance up to present times where rights were universally interpreted the way you describe them - though your view certainly is pretty widespread in the US discourse. If one wants to conveniently fit all the different views on the topic into two categories, the view advocated by you would be the instituionalist tradition, with e.g. John Rawls as a famous proponent. The reasoning driving Finland here is the consequentialist tradition, represented by e.g. Amartya Sen. At the risk of oversimplifying things, the consequentialist interpretation is more popular in Europe, while the favorite in the USA is the institutionalist thinking.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 7y ago
Declaration of Independence: > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Shelter is a necessity to life. Without a permanent address, it is extremely difficult to obtain gainful employment, which is widely understood to be necessary for the pursuit of happiness. I'm not sure when you're referring to, saying "used to mean," but this humanitarian view of rights is quite solidly entrenched in US law. Ninth Amendment: > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. The founders deliberately left this barn-door open for the sake of progress.
coldtea 7y ago
>Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct, because the government was not the source of said capability, and therefore had no authority to control the capability. No, that's for the government-phobic American liberals. Rights used to mean things a person is warranted to, just because they exist. For most European cultures for example the government = the enforcers of the will of the people (if we're talking about a democratic government, elected etc), so there's no hostility between the two (except to the degree that it doesn't enforce people's will). That's the case for the more cohesive, ethnic-wise, countries. For Americans it was more complicated, because it was established as a hodgepodge of peoples (as opposed to a single people) with different ideas, ethnic backgrounds, histories, etc. So no single government could cover those all, and any government was viewed with mistrust.
DavidVoid 7y ago
>Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct That's only if you look at it from a very old and US-centric perspective. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 [1], for example, includes the following articles: "ARTICLE 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. ARTICLE 26 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." Those don't sound like "merely not obstructing" kinds of rights. [1]: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=eng https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=eng
- Torches70 7y ago
  It's fundamentally a conflict of the very European concept of individual liberty and responsibility (within a compassionate and voluntarily united community) versus the somewhat alien concept of mandatory communal 'cooperation' observed in foreign cultures. I hadn't seen this list before and I find it outrageous. I might even go so far as to say that it constitutes an assault on our culture. Not that I would expect any less of the UN.

by yters 7y ago

shusson 7y ago

> Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct references or examples?

CapitalistCartr 7y ago
The American Bill of Rights; first 10 amendments to the U. S. Constitution, are restrictions on what the government can do to the people, not stuff the government has to do for, or give to, the people.
- shusson 7y ago
  Amendment 6, 7 and 8 sound like stuff the government has to do for people. e.g "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."
  - dbatten 7y ago
    Yes, on a surface level, these are framed as "stuff the government has to do for the people," but the root issue is still making sure the government doesn't take away the rights and freedoms people naturally have. Written a different way, this would say "the government can't take away your freedoms by arresting you, accusing you of a crime, but then delaying or denying a fair trial to figure out if you're actually guilty."
    - shusson 7y ago
      I think I see your point broadly, but some things don't really fit. Like how is, a person has the right "to have the assistance of counsel for his defense", linked to the government not taking away the rights of people. I guess I'm more focusing on the `fair` part in the rights, which to me seems more connected with something like housing.
      - dbatten 7y ago
        Ensuring you have counsel is intended to make sure that the government can't unfairly imprison/punish a person who is ignorant of the legal system and incapable of defending themselves. The end goal is still to be a check on government power. That's still far different from the government being obligated to provide you housing. (To be clear - I'm not taking a position on universal housing. It might be a great idea! I just think it's a different class of right, and I think the distinction is worth preserving.)
        shusson 7y ago
        > The end goal is still to be a check on government power I see, I always thought that those amendments were about equality between people, but in this context it makes more sense.
      - keanzu 7y ago
        Putting together an effective legal defense in the face of myriad laws is a difficult task. The government agrees to not abuse its power of incarceration against the citizenry. Your right to freedom is what's at stake. If the government wants to take it they agree to make their case, not do so capriciously.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      By this logic, you can say "the government can't take away your freedoms by evicting you and then denying you the right to find housing elsewhere."
      - 7y ago
greggeter 7y ago
Bill of Rights comes to mind. Religion, speech, association, mobility, self defense, defense from tyranny, fair trial, etc.

praveenperera 7y ago

I agree, a natural right is something the government can’t grant, only take away.

gchamonlive 7y ago

You could easily argument that by facilitating operations in speculation and high concentrations of wealth in a few hands, the government has indeed been obstructing people from their rights. It is only natural to counterbalance this trend with providing people with the needs they have been deprived of, like shelter.

yters 7y ago
Perhaps you should spell out this easy argument. On the surface it makes no sense to me. Bob down the street having a mansion doesn't impinge on my rights in any way. In fact, it is great that Bob's mansion doesn't get taken away for my sake, because it means I have the opportunity to also get a mansion that won't be taken away from me :)
- gchamonlive 7y ago
  If you look for the problem where it is non-exsitent the thought will surely make no sense, but instead of a mansion in the suburbs, think of a highly populated area. Think silicon valley for instance, where 150k does not allow for a decent living condition. Take my home country, Brazil: 6.9 million homeless, 6 million empty homes (https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-44028774 https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-44028774). The exact nature of this we can only speculate, but given how crazy expensive flats in big cities like sao paulo cost and how many of those are uninhabited, we can only blame speculation and the market regulation for it. That is some of the thought behind my argument.
  - yters 7y ago
    I would disagree that everyone needs to live in sao paulo or silicon valley.
    - gchamonlive 7y ago
      I never said that. I am just describing a problem. Those who live there do so because they either have jobs, family or some other need. In any case, that would not be a problem if, like in Japan's most populated zones, there wasn't this disparity between land pricing and uninhabited zones.

wffurr 7y ago

Your capabilities are meaningless if you can't eat, don't have shelter, and are sick.

rienbdj 7y ago
your freedom of assembly (for example) is not infringed upon if you can't assemble on the moon.
zip1234 7y ago
The point is that it is inaccurate to use the word 'right' because the government is providing a product not a right as a right is something that you would have inherently without the government there anyways.
- keanzu 7y ago
  The water is muddied somewhat by things like: The Sixth Amendment guarantees the rights of criminal defendants, including the right to a public trial without unnecessary delay, the right to a lawyer, the right to an impartial jury, and the right to know who your accusers are and the nature of the charges and evidence against you. People conflate these rights with human rights but they are in place to prevent the government from unduly interfering with your inalienable rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" which the Declaration of Independence says have been given to all humans by their creator, and which governments are created to protect.
  - AlgorithmicTime 7y ago
    Those are restrictions on what the government can do to you, not requirements that you be provided something. The government cannot prosecute in secret after keeping you locked up for years. The government cannot prevent you from obtaining counsel. The government cannot choose a jury on the basis of its bias against you. The government cannot shield whoever accused you from scrutiny. The government must tell you of what you are accused.
  - socialdemocrat 7y ago

zozbot234 7y ago

Private property in land is pretty much the definition of a government-created privilege, so the government does plenty of "obstructing" when it comes to people's right to shelter. The governments which originally granted those monopoly rights on land many centuries ago had no inherent authority to do so-- although they may have had authority to lease the use of that land for some limited time, under fair and non-discriminatory rules. (This is how land is managed e.g. in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the system works quite well.)

keanzu 7y ago
> had no inherent authority to do Who decides what inherent authority governments do and don't have?
- yters 7y ago
  Hopefully not the governments!
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> Private property in land is pretty much the definition of a government-created privilege Though I welcome citations to prove the matter one way or the other, I suspect that the 18th-century Lockean concept of natural rights which informed the founders of the USA, saw ownership of private property as a right and not a government-created privilege. That is, if one claimed land on what was seen as terra nullius, or if a person’s family had owned the lank back to time immemorial, then the land was rightfully theirs regardless of government recognition or not. State recognition in the form of deeds would only have represented something useful for dispute resolution, and did not imply that the state was granting any rights.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Locke specifically cautioned that ownership in land could only be justified so long as there was "enough, and as good, left in common for others". Clearly, this is no longer the case today; indeed, the monetary value of that monopoly right precisely shows the extent to which the use of land has become scarce.

mc32 7y ago

And if the government can “grant” you something they can take it away as well. It also has the quality of creating dependency on a government and their ability to deliver and or their ability to dictate conditions.

mewpmewp2 7y ago
Other rights can also be taken away. I do not think either of those comments have valuable meaning.
- keanzu 7y ago
  In countries without constitutional protections, sure. But in the US taking away people's inalienable rights, for example to free speech, is nearly impossible.
  - mewpmewp2 7y ago
    And if you give everyone housing you would still have to use force to take away that housing and especially from so many people, the same way you would have to use force to take away free speech.
    - mc32 7y ago
      All you have to do is pit one group as more deserving than another and let them fight it out. You also let them deteriorate like the Soviet housing blocks (not that the tenants didn’t try to do upkeep, but infrastructural aspects).
      - mewpmewp2 7y ago
        This would take a while. What I am trying to say though is that action and inaction are not so different really. There are plenty of things government has to actively do and enforce to make sure that any basic rights are honored. You can take away free speech by simply stop policing and defending your people. Meaning free speech will not be so free as someone might kill you for what you are saying. Decision whether something should be made a right should not be based on whether it can be labelled as passive or active, but whether it will benefit the society. If making housing a right overall increases average life quality and makes unproductive lives productive it should be done. People here can disagree or agree whether the people who will get that housing will male something of their life, and this is something that we have to experiment with in order to find out. Also if you believe that of the government and that government can not inherently be improved there is not much to do anyway.

dbatten 7y ago

I agree. I really wish people would tweak the rhetoric just slightly - "housing should be a right" is a perfectly logical humanitarian cause to rally behind. It doesn't assume the right is innate, doesn't call it a "human" right, but still says housing should be something everybody in our society is entitled to. Reasonable people can then disagree about whether the humanitarian benefits of making it a right are worth the costs, etc. Calling things that aren't innate to our humanity "human rights" is absurd - for housing, but especially for things like the internet. Should we try politicians in The Hague because they don't provide universal housing for their people? Should we impose international sanctions on countries that don't have widespread broadband? Of course not. Conflating these concepts also devalues the concept of human rights, and reduces our ability to actually focus on human rights violations. Slavery, political oppression, violence, etc. are still a very real and special class of problem in our world. People's innate human dignity is being trampled every day by oppressive, violent regimes (and, even in some cases, by liberal democracies). Let's not water down our view of these travesties by conflating them with debates about the generosity of the welfare state in rich Western democracies.

bildung 7y ago
But housing specifially is a human right, it is stated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
- dbatten 7y ago
  Of course it's in the UN's declaration... I just disagree philosophically with the UN's declaration. Human rights, in my mind, are something that existed before the UN, and exist independent of the UN. And there's centuries of political philosophy that agree with me on that point. See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence. That tradition of political philosophy sees rights as inherent to humanity (in this case God-given, but it doesn't have to be), not guaranteed by some statement of a government or group of governments.

keanzu 7y ago

Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group—a government, for example—usually in the form of abuse or coercion. As such, negative rights exist unless someone acts to negate them. A positive right is a right to be subjected to an action of another person or group. In other words, for a positive right to be exercised, someone else's actions must be added to the equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

lhopki01 7y ago
Usually summed up as freedom from and freedom to. It's an over generalization but the US has tended to favor freedom from and Europe freedom to.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

socialdemocrat 7y ago

No that was never the case. You are making a universal assumption about how the e.g. US was founded. This idea of government not getting in the way of citizens is an American idea. It does not apply to every country. And the US, Canada and Australia are also outliers in this respect. In these cases one had vast amounts of land and resources and relatively few people. Anyone could in principle make it by working the land. In most other countries civilization has existed for thousands of years and all land is taken. Without government working with people, there really is not opportunity in these cases. If one takes the European experience, common people have a history of having been exploited by the rich, pushed into tiny plots of land. It was only through democratic control of government that the common man could start to get the government to work for his/her benefit.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
In Europe as well it used to be mostly about rights in the sense of freedom to do things without obstruction and about limiting state/monarch power. See the English Bill of Rights or the French Revolution. America was founded on the same principles. Housing as a human right may be classically interpreted as being free to buy, rent, build your house, etc. but the widespread modern interpretation is that individuals are entitled to be provided housing.
- bildung 7y ago
  The consequentialist philosophy of justice (which is the base of the Finnish reasoning) goes a bit like this: * People should have a right to housing. * Yet we see many people how apparently can't obtain housing. * Assuming they don't just all prefer to live on the streets, some forces are hindering them to get housing. * It is therefore the responsibiliy of society to remove this discrimination, so that people don't just have the right on paper, but also factually. So this isn't about entitlement in the negative sense. The constitutionalist view more common in the US: * People should have a right to housing (I know, not per the consitution, but this is the right this article is about) * If nobody is discriminated by law, based on race, gender or something else, from practicing this right (e.g. buying property, or signing a contract for renting a flat), then all is fine. So the core difference is that the consequentialist view looks at empirical evidence to decide whether there is discrimination or not. The institutional view just looks at the law etc. ( = the institutions).

bildung 7y ago

AFAIR there never was a period from the renaissance up to present times where rights were universally interpreted the way you describe them - though your view certainly is pretty widespread in the US discourse. If one wants to conveniently fit all the different views on the topic into two categories, the view advocated by you would be the instituionalist tradition, with e.g. John Rawls as a famous proponent. The reasoning driving Finland here is the consequentialist tradition, represented by e.g. Amartya Sen. At the risk of oversimplifying things, the consequentialist interpretation is more popular in Europe, while the favorite in the USA is the institutionalist thinking.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

klyrs 7y ago

Declaration of Independence: > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Shelter is a necessity to life. Without a permanent address, it is extremely difficult to obtain gainful employment, which is widely understood to be necessary for the pursuit of happiness. I'm not sure when you're referring to, saying "used to mean," but this humanitarian view of rights is quite solidly entrenched in US law. Ninth Amendment: > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. The founders deliberately left this barn-door open for the sake of progress.

coldtea 7y ago

>Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct, because the government was not the source of said capability, and therefore had no authority to control the capability. No, that's for the government-phobic American liberals. Rights used to mean things a person is warranted to, just because they exist. For most European cultures for example the government = the enforcers of the will of the people (if we're talking about a democratic government, elected etc), so there's no hostility between the two (except to the degree that it doesn't enforce people's will). That's the case for the more cohesive, ethnic-wise, countries. For Americans it was more complicated, because it was established as a hodgepodge of peoples (as opposed to a single people) with different ideas, ethnic backgrounds, histories, etc. So no single government could cover those all, and any government was viewed with mistrust.

DavidVoid 7y ago

>Rights used to mean human capabilities that government should not obstruct That's only if you look at it from a very old and US-centric perspective. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 [1], for example, includes the following articles: "ARTICLE 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. ARTICLE 26 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." Those don't sound like "merely not obstructing" kinds of rights. [1]: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=eng https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Language.aspx?LangID=eng

Torches70 7y ago
It's fundamentally a conflict of the very European concept of individual liberty and responsibility (within a compassionate and voluntarily united community) versus the somewhat alien concept of mandatory communal 'cooperation' observed in foreign cultures. I hadn't seen this list before and I find it outrageous. I might even go so far as to say that it constitutes an assault on our culture. Not that I would expect any less of the UN.